Elite Beat Agents bound for Korea, a slim chance for K-Pop?

Watching what Nintendo is doing in Korea has always been rather interesting to me. Unlike other companies that shovel games to the market ripe with Japanese text, Nintendo is carefully localizing each game. Releasing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team in Hangul is of their major localization projects and it arrives in South Korea at the end of the month. This is going to be the first RPG… (okay it’s a dungeon RPG, but it’s still text heavy) game localized by Nintendo of Korea.

The other project I was hoping to see was Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan. Which group would Nintendo pick for Korea? Would Nintendo make an entirely new game? What about songs? Will we see Boa, Rain, etc.? The single screenshot shines some light on the project. Nintendo of Korea picked the CIA trio over the Ouendan and at least one of the storylines is going to be the same. OK. But what about music? Somehow I doubt that Nintendo is going to completely refresh the song list with K-Pop, but there is a slim chance one or two songs have to be switched because of licensing issues. However, if the song list is brand new Elite Beat Agents (KR) might be the first widely imported Korean Nintendo DS game.

Epik High for Ouendan/EBA, PLEASE! Epik High must have a song in this game. ‘Fly’, ‘Love, Love, Love’, ‘Fan’ whatever, Epik High need to be in this. Se7en would be a wise choice. No doubt crazy fan-girls will buy it (and for Rain/Bi too).

http://www.freewebs.com/midnightscott MidnightScott

You seem to be forgetting that DS/DS Lite’s from other regions can’t support Korean DS games, or Chinese DS games for that matter. I don’t think the games will work…those might be region restricted.

Our DS’s don’t have the same firmware as Chinese or Korean versions, so the games won’t display the language, or may not work at all.

http://www.siliconera.com Spencer

@MidnightScott – That’s strange, I tried out Manjyeora Made in Wario on my Nintendo DS and the cart worked A-OK with the Korean subtitles on the bottom of the screen.

Ryu Kazama

If I have to import a Korean DS to…beat off (wow, that didn’t sound dirty at all…) to some Korean music, so be it.

I do understand the language display issue, though. I had that problem with the first Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen game on the GC. It wouldn’t display the actual Japanese text correctly. The last three games in the series worked fine though.

http://www.siliconera.com Spencer

@Ryu Kazama – You used a freeloader right? I think the text display issue may have came from using the swap disc. I’ve never had any problems with a Gamecube and a region flip switch.

@Midnight Scott – are you buying Korean carts or are you using some kind of flash cart?

Aoshi00

Yeah, I used the freeloader/swapping disc to play the first 2 Naruto gamecube games and the text came out as gibberish, which took a lot of enjoyment out of the game.. I still have Paper Mario RPG and it hangs when I used the freeloader :(..

I’m not too crazy about K-pop though.. their songs sound very Jpn in terms of rhythm and tones of the singers, except I have no idea what they’re singing.

http://www.ponytailscomics.com Jeremy

“except I have no idea what theyâ€™re singing.”

That’s pretty much exactly why I like foreign music.

http://www.freewebs.com/midnightscott MidnightScott

Oh snap, I tried the Korean version of Wario Ware and it worked fine. Nevermind, I retract my statement. What we can’t play on our DS’s is Chinese games, but it doesn’t matter, because we already have all the games :p

http://www.sexypenguin.com keith

Im in Korea and you know what the really stupid thing is.
More Koreans know basic English than Japanese.
But I always see the Japanese game coming here first.

I hate to say it but Korea is a haven for piracy but if Nintendo is going to try and sell here at least bring more English games and deal with translating later.

Oh well back to Ebay I go to find cool games

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